Savannah State student claims school president out to get him and others

The suspended chemical-engineering major testifies he was not stalking the school president's daughter in November.

Posted: Friday, March 24, 2006

ATLANTA - A Savannah State University student alleged Thursday during a hearing that he was suspended on trumped-up charges to stifle his investigation into wrongdoing by the school's president.

Two senior campus police officers have lost their job following the suspension, and the school's former baseball coach, Jamie Rigdon, is awaiting his own hearing for wrongful dismissal when he is expected to make similar claims. The hearing is being held by the state Office of Administrative Hearings on behalf of the University System of Georgia regents.

Marlin Johnson, a chemical-engineering major, is accused of stalking the daughter of President Carlton Brown on Nov. 9. Johnson testified he was merely videotaping a uniformed campus police officer assigned to escort her because he considered it an example of how Brown had wasted taxpayer dollars on benefits for himself and family.

Brown testified that he requested the escort in September to protect her against reaction to a column in the Savannah Morning News that quoted baseball players who said Jamilla Ricks-Brown engineered Rigdon's firing. She continues to have an escort today, six months after the column was published.

Johnson doesn't face criminal charges, just suspension from the university for violating the student code of ethics. The campus police chief testified that the case wasn't submitted to the district attorney's office for criminal prosecution because the investigation was sloppy.

"The reason was that the initial interaction was tainted when it got to the district attorney's office," said Chief Thomas Trawick. "... We did not want the community to think that we at Savannah State are incompetent."

The rookie officer escorting Ricks-Brown, Lucious Simons, testified he didn't feel threatened by Johnson or intend to issue a criminal citation until he was advised to later by higher-ups.

The detective who investigated the allegations initially, Kenneth White, and the police chief at the time, Alvin Stokes, were both ousted over their handling of the case. They testified they saw no evidence Johnson was stalking and that they had closed the case after being advised to from the district attorney's office.

Then, White said, he was instructed to reopen the case. When he refused, he was stripped of his rank and offered the midnight shift as a patrolman. He quit instead.

Stokes was fired and has an appeal pending for his own hearing.

"I strongly suspect it's because I wouldn't be a 'yes' man," Stokes said.

Brown testified he didn't know of Johnson's investigation at the time his daughter called him in tears saying she was being videotaped. Brown acknowledged he then called several senior administrators on her behalf and requested they perform a criminal background check on Johnson who has served time for violent crimes, but Brown said he didn't interfere with the investigation.

"She didn't understand really what this was all about," Brown said.

Johnson says he knows what it was all about.

"This case is not really about one student stalking another," he said. "This case is about a powerful man abusing his power for the benefit of his family."

Decisions in student hearings before administrative law judges usually are handed down four to six weeks later.

November's incident isn't the first time Ricks-Brown's complaint against Johnson wound up in a hearing. An argument the two had outside a drama class they shared two years earlier resulted in one complaint. Just days later and before a hearing could be held, she filed another complaint against him alleging he tried to hit her with his car while she was walking in a parking lot.

Campus police testified in one hearing that security cameras showed he only drove normally and did not threaten her. The outcome of the hearing on the argument found they were equally at fault, though he was ordered to perform community-service work and avoid contact with her. She was not sanctioned then.

Johnson waved a stack of seven police complaints filed by Ricks-Brown in her time at the school since 1999.